Zoom2 Invasion

[Trix]

Hello,

You may have ever noticed the huge number of Zoom2 files in your BAHN Zoom2 directory. I myself have 24M in 4039 files there.

Each user-defined car file can contain up to 160 cars, that is, 160 Zoom2 files, usually about 4-8Kbytes long. Using many user defined car files you get more and more Zoom2 files. Unlike the Zoom2 graphics for standard cars, these files must stay in the same directory as the layout that use them. This could lead to file duplication if independent layouts use them, and this all could waste your HDD space. And I haven't counted the Zoom1 graphic files, which can be up to 100 per layout, as of Bahn 3.84.

Although these files are accessed only when their corresponding car graphic file is loaded, the repeated open/close file operations slow down the loading process.

My idea is that instead of a couple of fzz files, a single container file could be used. This file would contain all needed fzz files in their fzz file format, and should have a simple own format, in order to allow other software to easily extract the fzz files when needed or to pack the fzz files into such container file.

With all needed data located in a single file instead of more than one, this should reduce the loading speed.
Besides that, it is quite annoying to have so many files in one's nt3 directory.

Most of Bahn's users rely on the standard Bahn vehicles and use a little number of user-defined vehicles, but others don't. This is just an idea for future versions.

Greetings,
Trix

[Sascha Claus]

Hello,<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">You may have ever noticed the huge number of Zoom2 files in your BAHN Zoom2 directory. I myself have 24M in 4039 files there.</tr></td></table>
BAHN 3.84 has all Zoom2 graphics in one file called BAHN.fz2, which avoids all the problems with many small files.

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">Unlike the Zoom2 graphics for standard cars, these files must stay in the same directory as the layout that use them. This could lead to file duplication if independent layouts use them, and this all could waste your HDD space.

My idea is that instead of a couple of fzz files, a single container file could be used.</tr></td></table>
Who will fill this file? Will we need a BAHNzip which puts user graphic files in this container file when unzipping them? And which program deletes the user graphics from the container when deleting a .nt3 file?

[Chris]

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">Who will fill this file?</tr></td></table>

The same process as creates their standard counterpart, presumably. So whichever program creates the .nfz file creates an accompanying .nzz (Or Something™) containing the Zoom2 images to go with them.

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">And which program deletes the user graphics from the container when deleting a .nt3 file?</tr></td></table>

Presumably the same process that pressed the "Delete" button in the first place?

[Trix]

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">BAHN 3.84 has all Zoom2 graphics in one file called BAHN.fz2, which avoids all the problems with many small files.</tr></td></table>Well, I must admit that I may have missed to notice this feature, thus I have to ask if the Zoom2 directory is still usable for adding zoom2 graphics for cars not having them on the fz2 file, or it may be safely removed.
<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed">Zitat:</span></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">Who will fill this file? Will we need a BAHNzip which puts user graphic files in this container file when unzipping them? And which program deletes the user graphics from the container when deleting a .nt3 file?</tr></td></table>As Chris said, each nfz should have their zoom2 counterpart file.
Any add, delete or car resize on the nfz does the same to the car graphics in the Zoom2 container.
There is nothing to do about this from the .nt3 files, except that when adding a .nfz file it will search for the zoom2 and load the zoom2 graphics from there, instead of many fzz files.